Metadata publishing

Metadata publishing is the process of making metadatadata elements available to external users, both people and machines using a formal review process and a commitment to change control processes.

Metadata publishing is the foundation upon which advanced distributed computing functions are being built. But like building foundations, care must be taken in metadata publishing systems to ensure the structural integrity of the systems built on top of them.

When classifying benefits of metadata publishing two groups are usually considered. External parties are usually consumers of information that are not part of the publishing organization. Internal parties are usually the various business units or departments within an organization.

Organizations that publish their metadata could make it easier for unauthorized people to find sensitive data if they breach an organization's firewall

Vendors that publish their metadata risk customers creating tools that could allow their customers to export their data from computer systems therefor making it easier to migrate off of a vendor's system

Organizations that create applications that store data in file systems can also publish metadata definitions. One common way to perform this is to store application data in a compressed XML file format. The XML files can be uncompressed and validated against an external XML Schema. An example of this is done by the Open Source FreeMind tool.